Washingtonians

[Kaneke]

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Friend me on FB! I don't play Farmville anymore, but I think I can still be a neighbor. Just look for Kim Stewart-Hunter.

you must have your privacy set on your profile so that you aren't searchable under your name ... the pages that came up are definitely not you ,,,

 

[Hinotori]

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Those chicks are absolutely adorable. I love the babies.



And I want to wish all those travelling a safe trip.

 

[Stumpfarmer]

No new pips this morning. I'll let the 'bator run until tomorrow, just in case, but none of Sylvia's eggs hatched. The other three unhatched also look as if they're all from the same hen.

Babies are all OK, happy against the wall of their box which is about 6" from Kaneke's radiant heater.

 

[Kaneke]

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oh drat, what's up with Sylvia's eggs? I know you were really hoping that all of them would hatch

you might want to give them maybe another day or two or three, I've heard of some taking 25 days ...

if you want, you can let the chicks snuggle right up against, in contact with, that heater --- mine liked to shove their fuzzybutts up against it for a few moments at a time -- then later they really enjoyed perching on a wide fallen branch, a couple of inches away from the heater

I had 2x4s sitting directly against the thing, stabilizing it ... then some of the chicks thought it would be neat to get BEHIND it !

 

[Stumpfarmer]

Photo from the other end of the age scale: Maggie's new tail feathers. She's having the more civilized sort of moult, with new shiny feathers pushing through the sun-bleached and tattered old ones. Only her tail shed (mostly, two feathers left) before the new feathers started. It looks ridiculous, only less and less so every day. Except...are 9-10 month old chickens supposed to go through a complete moult? Is it possible she's a year older than I was told?

 

[Stumpfarmer]

Quote:
oh drat, what's up with Sylvia's eggs? I know you were really hoping that all of them would hatch

you might want to give them maybe another day or two or three, I've heard of some taking 25 days ...

if you want, you can let the chicks snuggle right up against, in contact with, that heater --- mine liked to shove their fuzzybutts up against it for a few moments at a time -- then later they really enjoyed perching on a wide fallen branch, a couple of inches away from the heater

I had 2x4s sitting directly against the thing, stabilizing it ... then some of the chicks thought it would be neat to get BEHIND it !

Nah, they're doing fine as it is, I can't clean the tub by myself, and the people who trashed it are too busy to do it (although neither are working today, since it's his every-other-Friday off and she has an optomitrist appointment) and there's no way to put the heater in the plastic box that doesn't offend my safety rules. They have a nice heavy mohair sweater to snuggle under- the one my daughter wore as a winter coat when she was in second grade, and refused to wear anything else even when Grammie took her coat shopping, until she got a hand-me-down parka from her teacher's daughter

Now I'm also trying to figure out when I can move the nine new chicks in with the five old ones; I just watched the silver boy fly from the water dish to the rock, and the big 'uns are more than twice as big as the small. Is there some sort of plateau when five day's difference in age doesn't equal such a huge difference in size? Soon, I hope?

 

[Cloverleaf Farm]

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LOL I finished bathing birds at 230 this morning...

 

[Kaneke]

Quote:
oh drat, what's up with Sylvia's eggs? I know you were really hoping that all of them would hatch

you might want to give them maybe another day or two or three, I've heard of some taking 25 days ...

if you want, you can let the chicks snuggle right up against, in contact with, that heater --- mine liked to shove their fuzzybutts up against it for a few moments at a time -- then later they really enjoyed perching on a wide fallen branch, a couple of inches away from the heater

I had 2x4s sitting directly against the thing, stabilizing it ... then some of the chicks thought it would be neat to get BEHIND it !

Nah, they're doing fine as it is, I can't clean the tub by myself, and the people who trashed it are too busy to do it (although neither are working today, since it's his every-other-Friday off and she has an optomitrist appointment) and there's no way to put the heater in the plastic box that doesn't offend my safety rules. They have a nice heavy mohair sweater to snuggle under- the one my daughter wore as a winter coat when she was in second grade, and refused to wear anything else even when Grammie took her coat shopping, until she got a hand-me-down parka from her teacher's daughter

Now I'm also trying to figure out when I can move the nine new chicks in with the five old ones; I just watched the silver boy fly from the water dish to the rock, and the big 'uns are more than twice as big as the small. Is there some sort of plateau when five day's difference in age doesn't equal such a huge difference in size? Soon, I hope?

I hope a more experienced eggs-pert answers this -- but for what it's worth, in the natural world there often seem to be five days' difference in chicks ... and here they are eating their own food, not waiting for parents to bring food to them and feed them ...

I've also read of incubator hatching, stretching over 3 or 4 or 5 days, with the first-hatched chicks still in the incubator with the newest

(and you won't have the problem of the broody inadvertently stepping on one of them either, as both Dawn and Dana did)

I'd give them a couple of days and I bet the size difference will be considerably less; also the newest ones will have found their "sea legs"

however, I'm a bit disappointed in my girls; 9 out of 18 eggs from this last hatch; versus 4 out of 6 from the first one ... and yet all those were really fresh, none more than 2 days old, and hand-carried ...

(and every egg I've opened here, to eat, has had a definitely bullseye -- but then I remember that Dawn had to deal with one BAD egg that exploded)

 

[Stumpfarmer]

I fear that the answer to "what's wrong with Sylvia's eggs?" may be Ian. I'd keep Bjorn and move her and Malvina in with him instead, but I don't want to keep an extra cockerel over the winter, and even if I get eggs I don't want to hatch any more until after the first of the year- I'm stretched to the breaking point as it is, and with whatever it was that was terrifying Bacchus* away from the pine trees yesterday, I can't assume I'll have a lot of days when taking care of him doesn't take up a big part of my time.

I'm feeling pretty defeated right now- another week past with no appreciable progress toward getting the Wyandotte coop finalized, even though I'm at the fence end of things, which should be manageable by me alone. Once I take care of the chickens- still irrationally spread over six locations- and the sheep, and me-as-a-brittle-diabetic, there just is not time for anything else.

Part of the problem is that either through some mind-quirk or other, neither my husband or daughter gets the whole "on the way to" part of time management. I asked here to pick up a neat pile of used paper towels which were right next to her feet and put them in the garbage which was right next to her next task and you'd have thought I'd requested she walk to Barbados for a dram of rum. Ditto my husband and feeding the young Wyandottes: he could scoop feed, walk to the hoop house on his way to the car, open the door and feed them in a couple of extra minutes, max, and I could pick up the scoop later, but he sees the request as a big deal and total imposition. And neither of them are good at having chores go to the level of habit: it took twenty years of being married to me before "do dishes" became "do dishes every night" instead of "do dishes when we run out." Some days I swear he took to this place after Texas because his slobbery is not punished with roach infestations.

A lot of it was that I used to do stuff, big stuff, (Deirdre saw the Iris Garden before it became an oregano wasteland) (dug and paved two patios, maintained the gravel/paver steps in the front yard, weeded giant mixed perennial borders now run to weeds)allone or with intermittant help for heavy lifting, and the only one who's really gotten the message that I'm no longer up to that level of output is me.

Oh, well: CRANKY! Also in substantial pain due to some jiggering I've done with the Hamburg cage skeleton.



*Did I mention that? Bacchus was tied over by the prairie restoration patch yesterday, and pulled his tether loose and ran up onto the front porch; I moved him further up the hill, dropped his tether over the peg, and he freaked right the heck out and went running up toward the house again. My sister suspects he smelled the coyote path on the other side of the fence, my daughter suspects he disturbed the ringnecks my cousin released last week and they frightened him by flying towardhim. I think it may have been either of those, or a raccoon or possom, or just the wind blowing hard out of the north. He's a sheep, I suspect his standards of proof are low.

 

[RustyHen]

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LOL I finished bathing birds at 230 this morning...

hope you got some rest?? See tomorrow!